Mac n' Cheese Bake

 Just look at that cheese oozing out

I doubt you've ever had a anything as decadent as this.  I made this last Tuesday for our house's weekly viewing/hosting of LOST.  I have been making this for two years, or ever since I bought Amy Sedaris's "I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence."  While I originally bought this book for the comedy, I ended up using it for the recipes.  The Greek recipes in here are authentic and absolutely wonderful.  But this is my favorite recipe - there are so many different kinds of cheese and so much richness.  When I made this I forgot to buy some yellow cheddar cheese so I had to use some Asiago cheese... but I'm not complaining!

Amy Sedaris’a Macaroni and Cheese

Adapted from: I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence

Ingredients:

• 1 box of elbow macaroni
• 1 stick of butter
• 1 cup grated smoked Gouda
• 1 cup grated white Monterey Jack cheese
• 2 cups grated mild yellow Cheddar cheese (I used sharp)
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup milk
• Salt and pepper to taste

Topping

• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup of breadcrumbs
• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 8 thin pats of butter

Directions:

1. Boil macaroni in salted water to al dente. While you are waiting for it to boil, melt together  butter, cheeses, cream, milk and salt and pepper.
2. Drain macaroni and put back into the pot. When cheese mixture is melted and smooth, pour over macaroni and mix well. Add to a 2-quart casserole dish.
3. For topping, mix together Parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, parsley, salt and pepper, and sprinkle on top of the macaroni and cheese. Top with pats of butter.
4. Bake at 425 degrees F for 20-25 minutes or until browned on top. One should be forewarned: this is a very rich dish. Not appropriate for diners with heart problems, the elderly, or breast-feeding mothers.

Gnocchi with Spinach Basil Pesto, Slow Roasted Tomatoes, and Asparagus

I think my cell phone on the side really completes the dish

The first time I had gnocchi was in Rome last summer.  It was the lightest and most heavenly thing I had ever eaten.  Every bite tasted like a cloud, I was hooked and immediately jumped to the Internet to find out how to make it.  Everything I read made gnocchi seem like the hardest thing in the world to make.  Sadly, it was put on my cooking back burner... until now.


Last Wednesday Jake came over for dinner and I knew I wanted to make something new, good and impressive.  Gnocchi was the first thing that came to mind.  I feverishly started researching how to make it; different techniques, recommend sauces and how many attempts it took people to get it right.  Apparently you need a ricer, an Italian grandmother and years of experience to get it right.  And even then you might not get it right on the first try.  I can honestly say I was afraid that I would mess it up and serve Jake dense potato balls.


But once again Deb at Smitten Kitchen saved the day.  Apparently you don't NEED a ricer, you can easily use a the large grater side of your box grater, you just have to make sure the potatoes gratings don't clump together.  And even though I'm Irish and have an infinite love for potatoes, you don't need an Italian grandmother to get it right (meaning my grandmothers do just fine!).  Yes, that's right, I SUCCESSFULLY made gnocchi on my first try!  I was (and partially still am) on a culinary high.  And I'm pretty sure Jake liked it too (but you'll have to ask him to make sure).  I also gave some to my roommate, Zenka, and she didn't seem to complain one bit... In fact, I think she gobbled it down.


If you have any questions about making them, I did enough research and bookmarked enough sites that I  can share tips or answer questions.  But I really recommend you try to make this because it is incredibly rewarding when you do!


PS - I adapted this recipe from SO many sites, but I used Smitten Kitchen's technique tips the most.


Ingredients:

• 4 good sized Russet potatoes
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten

Directions:

1. After cleaning the potatoes, cut a ⅛ inch deep all around the potato (it will make peeling them a lot easier later).  
2. Place in boiling water for about 30 minutes, or until a paring knife can easily be inserted into the fattest past of the potato.
3. When potatoes are done, remove and peel right away, the skins should slip right off with minimal assistance of a knife (and unless you have super hands, you'll want to use a kitchen towel or hot mitt to hold to potatoes).
4. Then grate the potatoes on the largest holes of a box grater into a large bowl. Add the lightly beaten egg and the salt to the potatoes and mix well with a wooden spoon.
5. Add the flour to the potatoes a little at a time, using only as much as you need so that the dough will not stick to your hands. When the flour has been incorporated, bring the dough together with your fingertips.  At this point my dough was still kind of sticky - you really want to avoid using too much flour (it will end up being very dense), err on the side of caution.
6. Dump the dough and any remaining floury bits onto a slightly floured surface. Knead the dough as you would bread dough. Press down and away with the heel of your hand, fold the dough over, make a quarter turn, and repeat the process. Knead for about three or four minutes.
7. Form the dough into a ball and then divide it into 6 smaller balls. On a lightly floured surface, roll out one of the six pieces using your fingertips into a long rope about 3/4 inch thick. Cut the dough into 1 inch pieces.
8. Sadly, I am not yet talented enough to add the traditional gnocchi ridges with a fork, but if you can: create the ridges, press each piece of dough against the tines of a fork. With your finger, gently roll the pressed dough back off the fork. Place the gnocchi in a single layer on a lightly floured or parchment-lined dish. If you’d like to freeze them for later use, do so on this tray and once they are frozen, drop them into a freezer bag. This ensures that you won’t have one enormous gnocchi mass when you are ready to cook them.
9. To cook the gnocchi, place them into a pot of boiling and well-salted water. After a few minutes the gnocchi will float to the top. Continue to cook for one minute then remove,  and set aside.  If you are using a sauce, add to a saute pan with the (heated) sauce and cook for another minute or two.

Spinach-Basil Pesto

1. In a food processor combine a hand-full of basil leaves, about a cup of fresh spinach, ¼ cup of pine nuts, ½ cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese, ¼ cup grated asiago cheese, 3 cloves of minced garlic, some freshly ground black pepper, and a few pinches of kosher salt.  All of these ingredients can be more or less to taste.
2. After this has been pureed, continue running the food processor and drizzle in olive oil until the pesto has reached your desired consistency.
3. This can then be stored in the fridge in a sealed container for a few days, but for the gnocchi you will want to heat it in a sauté pan, adding the gnocchi for the last one or two minutes.

Slow (Oven) Roasted Tomatoes

1. Preheat over to 250 degrees.
2. Cut Roma tomatoes in half and place in a small casserole dish. Drizzle with olive oil and top with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper.
3. Cook in oven for about two hours or until nice and soft.

My Recipe for Roasted Asparagus

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

The best way to survive at the Bivouac is through bribery.  My birthday was last friday (the big 22!) and I wanted my shift covered so I could spend my birthday how I wanted.  I wanted spend time gathering up free things (mainly food) all around Ann Arbor with my little sister; we were successful!  I wanted to go out to Dominick's for dinner with my family; we ate outside and sipped on sangria.  Most importantly, I wanted to hangout with friends that night!  But I was scheduled to work!  Have no fear - bribing with baking is here!


After sending out an email with a link to my blog promising I can (try) to cook almost anything they could dream of - Andrew took the bait.  He signed a sub-slip agreeing to cover my shift with one stipulation - I would make him whole grain bread (sans any rye).  I brought this in for him the day before my birthday and I believe he had it less than 5 minutes before digging in.  It suffices to say that he's this breads biggest fan.  It wasn't too hard to make, so I think I'll make this again for my use!


PS - the loaf of bread is a little oddly shaped because I rolled the dough up so it was too long... and had to forcibly shape it into the bread pan.


Honey Whole Wheat Bread
Adapted from Photo Blog


Ingredients:

• 1 cup water (plus 4 tbsp if you're at high altitude like me)
• 1 cup milk (plus 4 tbsp for high altitude)
• 3 tbsp butter
• 1/4 cup honey
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 3 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 tbsp (or packets) yeast
• 2 tsp salt

Directions:

1. Heat the water, milk, butter and honey on the stove using a candy thermometer. Stir occasionally. When the mixture reaches 125-130 degrees F, remove from heat. (If it's any hotter, there is a good chance the yeast could deactivate)
2. In a large bowl, mix the all purpose flour, salt and yeast. 
3. Add the heated liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients. Mix for a few minutes until evenly blended. 
4. Begin adding the whole wheat flour, add two of the cups of flour one cup at a time and gradually add the third cup during kneading. Depending on humidity, you may need more or less flour.
5. Knead for 5-10 minutes, until the dough is elastic and slightly sticky.
6. Separate the dough in half and place in two lightly greased bowls. Cover, then let rise for 45 minutes or so, until the dough looks about double in bulk.
7. Once the dough has risen, punch down and knead briefly, until pliable. 
8. Roll each section of dough with a rolling pin until it forms a flat square or rectangle, then roll the flattened dough into a snug jelly roll. Seal the seam by firmly pinching and patting the dough together. 
9. Grease your baking pan(s). Place the rolled dough into the pan, seam side down. Let rise for about 30 minutes, or until the pan is pretty well filled.
10. Bake at 400 degrees F for 15-30 minutes, depending on how dark you want the crust to be. 
11. Let the bread cool COMPLETELY after removing from the oven - don't you dare slice into it until you can't feel any warmth coming off of it - even then I'd still wait 5 minutes more!

Lavender Honey Biscotti with a Lemon Glaze

I think next time I have tea with the queen, I'll make these.  They taste so elegant with a hint of the promise of sunny spring weather.  The main reason I made these is because I happened upon some culinary lavender and I really wanted to use it.  Most recipes out on the Internet with lavender are for shortbread cookies or syrups.  I get frustrated most times I make shortbread and I have no use for a syrup.  Then I saw this - wonderful!  I think this may be my favorite biscotti recipe now - it's still so crisp but it's not as sweet as most biscotti's.  And the lemon glaze I decided to top it off with?  Mmmm, I love the tang of lemon.  I brought this into The Environment Report this morning and they all loved it!  If you can recall, Lester challenged me to a "biscotti off" when I first started working there last August.  I wonder how these would fare in a biscotti off, part two...

Lavender Honey Biscotti with a Lemon Glaze

Adapted from bake.mix.stir

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons honey (I used a raspberry infused honey)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons grated lemon zest
• 1 tablespoon dried lavender blossoms
• Juice of one large lemon
• Approx. ¾ cup powdered sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
3. In a large bowl, whisk sugar and eggs until it achieves a light lemon color. Mix in honey, vanilla, zest and lavender. Sift dry ingredients over the wet mixture and mix just until dough is combined.
4. The dough will probably be a little sticky. Cut the dough in half and move one piece of dough to a parchment lined baking sheet. Using lightly floured or wet hands, stretch dough into a rough 13×2″ log. Repeat with remaining dough (you want them to be about 3″ apart on the baking sheet.) Pat down each dough a bit to flatten and to smooth the top. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until firm and golden brown – turning pan once halfway through.
5. Cool the loaves for 5-10 minutes – until you can handle them. Lower the oven temperature to 325.
6. Using a serrated knife, cut each loaf diagonally into 1/4 to 1/2″ slices. Lay slices back on the baking sheet and place in the oven. Bake 15 minutes, until dry, turning over after 7 minutes. Transfer biscotti to wire rack and cool completely.
7. In a bowl with lemon juice, add in powdered sugar one tablespoon at a time until glaze at at the consistency you want.  Drizzle on cooled biscotti and sit until dry to the touch.

Hummus with Olive Oil Chips

Every Tuesday night some of my neighbors come over (mainly Jake and Sarah), Cory, my housemates, and I all crowd around the television and watch LOST.  Now, I don't watch LOST.  I never have, but now I probably will.  Due to the fact that is it on every Tuesday night, and I always home, I began watching it (in its final season).  And it's in my basic instinct whenever there is a large gathering of people, I feel like I must feed them.  Now every Tuesday night - I feed them.

Two weeks ago I made the dinner "Middle Eastern/Greek" themed.  I made my tried and true Spanakopita recipe, but I thought they might want something else - Hummus and chips.  I'm always so shocked when people try homemade hummus for the first time (it's always so much better) and then when I told them how easy it is, they are even more shocked.  I also felt that it would be appropriate to dip homemade chips in my homemade hummus.  The chips were so easy to make and it made a pretty large batch - enough to feed my friends and co-workers when I brought them into The Environment Report the next day.

Hummus

Ingredients:

• 22 oz chickpeas, canned
• 1 cup tahini paste
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 6-8 cloves of garlic, minced
• Extra virgin olive oil, to serve
• Trader Joe's Everyday Seasoning, to serve (optional)

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, add the tahini paste, water and lemon juice and mix well until it forms a uniform paste. Add the minced garlic to it and mix it well.
2. Now add the chickpea paste to the tahini sauce a little at a time, making sure everything gets incorporated evenly.
3. In a plate, spoon the hummus and create a canal with the back of the spoon to hold the olive oil, as seen in the photograph.
4. Sprinkle with sumac and serve with crackers.

Olive Oil Crackers

Adapted from: The Purple Foodie

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ cup water
• ¼ cup olive oil
• Freshly ground pepper (I used a mix of black, white and pink!)
• Sea salt to taste
• Coarse sea salt for garnish (I used pink Himalayan salt)
• More olive oil for brushing

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 220C.
2. In a large bowl, or the bowl of a Kitchen Aid add the flour baking powder, water, olive oil, salt and pepper. Knead the dough for 5-6 minutes until it all comes together.
3. Make walnut sized balls and roll them out as thinly as you can into long, oval shapes.
4. Place the rolled out crackers on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and brush with olive oil.
5. Bake for 5-6 minutes, or until the crackers are golden brown in color (I had to bake mine for about 10 minutes - but that's because my oven is kinda finicky)
6. Serve with the hummus!

Shamrock Sugar Cookies

I am posting another recipe so soon after my last post, could it be?  Yes, yes, it's true.  I fell really far behind on posting (I still have three more recipes to post!) so I might as well do a few at a time.

I made these cookies for St. Patrick's Day for a variety of reasons.  One, St. Patrick's Day has to be one of my favorite holidays.  Two, who doesn't like holiday themed cookies?  And three, I wanted to give these out to everyone I knew to make their day a little brighter!

I must say, this is one of the best sugar cookie recipes I have ever used.  The almond extract and lemon zest made this so much more than your typical sugar cookie.  Then on top of these, these cookies actually held their shape when you cooked them!  The only downside is that these aren't as easy as your roll-out, cut, and bake variety.  After forming the dough, I had to chill it it in fridge for about 30 minutes.  After it was chilled, I divided the dough into two balls and rolled out each one between two pieces of parchment paper.  Once I got the dough to about a ⅓ of an inch thickness, I froze the sheets of dough for about 20 minutes.  After cutting out the shapes and putting them onto parchment paper lined baking sheets, I re-rolled the dough, froze, and repeated cutting out the shapes.  Sounds like a lot of work, but trust me, it's worth it!

Sugar Cookies

Adapted from the Beantown Baker

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 c. butter
• 1 1/2 c. granulated sugar
• 1/2 c. powdered sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1 Tbsp lemon zest
• 5 c. flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• Parchment Paper, for rolling

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Cream butter and sugars in a mixer for 5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly. Add vanilla, almond, and lemon zest.
3. Sift in flour, baking powder, and salt a little at a time. Do not over mix, this process should take about one minute.
4. Chill dough for 30 minutes in fridge. After chilled, divide the dough into two balls and roll out each one between two pieces of parchment paper.  Once dough is at about a ⅓ of an inch thickness, freeze the sheets of dough for about 20 minutes. Remove from freezer and cut out shapes.  Re-roll dough and re-freeze.  Repeat.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and bake cookies for 7-8 minutes. Wait until cookies are cooled before icing.

Irish Soda Bread

I have been a horrible, horrible food blogger.  It is encroaching upon a month since the last time a wrote anything!  I know you don't want to hear my excuses, but I swear I have some!  First, I was on a cruise for the first week of March.  Here is some photographic evidence:

Aren't my housemates BEAUTIFUL with their new hairstyles? 

I know, woe is me.  But when you're cursing in the Bahamas, there isn't any access to a computer, let alone internet.  But when I came back to Ann Arbor, I decided to download a trial version of Aperture 3.  As amazing as it is, I knew it would be a little longer until I was able to by the program.  I mainly wanted to use the trail version to play around with and try editing some photos.  The problem was that I couldn't access my Aperture 2 photo library and I was too afraid to upload anything new into Aperture 3!  After going home and having my dad work his magic on my dear mac, I was able to get into Aperture 2.  Sad thing is that I fell in love with Aperture and I finally bought it this week!  Now I can upload, organize, and play around with photos like never before!

Now back to the food: I love Irish soda bread.  Scratch that, I love traditional Irish soda bread.  Most of the recipes floating around on the Internet call for ingredients like butter, raisins and eggs… my dear non-Gaelic friends, that is not traditional.  The fewer ingredients, the better.  I adapted this recipe from the Merlin Menu and just now realized that I didn't follow the directions.  This is a good thing, though!  The bread turned out perfectly.  My housemate, Kate, was even bragging to people at the bar that I was the first person to make Irish soda bread she liked.  And everyone at The Environment Report gobbled it up!  It's so easy to make and is such a crowd pleaser - go make some as soon as you can!

Side Note:  I didn't have any buttermilk, so I mixed two and a half cups of milk with 2 (and a little bit more) tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice that I let sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups bread flour
• 3 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 to 2 1/2 cups buttermilk. 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Line baking sheet with parchment paper or a silpat. Whisk both flours, sugar, and baking soda in bowl to blend.  Add buttermilk; stir until a sticky balls forms.
3. Divide into two loves.  Turn out onto floured surface and knead briefly until dough comes together, about 5 to 10 turns. Shape into a round ball and place on baking sheet. Sprinkle flour onto of the Cut a large X, 1/2 inch deep across the top of the dough.
4. Bake until the bread is deeply browned (30 to 45 minutes) and sounds hollow when tapped on the top. This bread will "look" done well before it is, so prepare to generally bake for the full time shown.